All At Once

I wish I was a master story teller who could come alive with the flicker of some ancient preserved flame in the night time. In the daytime I would be left by my lonesome, left to my own devices in terms of spending the small ration of time I received when I came unto this world from my poor mother's womb. I would sleep for hours on end, undisturbed, and the sun would shine through my small window to signal me to awaken my imagination, which is a curled up worm living in my head. I would eat only once a day because I don't know how to do any other trade that would allow me to eat more. I don't speak much because I don't have the words to express everything all at once. I may look calm and even bored on the outside but inside I am raining fire and light all at once. When I was a child I had horrible tantrums over the smallest things, like if I could not brush out a tangle in my hair. And I would get scolded but that only made me feel worse. But at least it would stop me from screaming. The only way people around me interacted with me was scolding me for doing things like that. Children stare at me. They stared at me then. They grew up and now their children stare at me in the same way. It bothers me sometimes but I learned to avoid their gazes. But I can tell stories like no one else can. For instance I could tell you about the cow who lost her way in the woods and found an ocean at the end and she jumped in because she couldn't do anything else. You know what happened after that? The cow realized she was swimming! Her sinews and her weight carried her through the water and she felt free. She was frightened but she was free. She was not lost, but she was found by the waters. And she became the Great Whale. She met others like her and she founded an empire of whales. They ruled the seas for a very long time. After many years she grew old. She began having dreams of earlier times. She had never told anyone about her youth, so she decided to tell it to everyone before she died. This is what she told them: "I was a cow who lived in a pasture. I wandered in the grass under the sun, I would be milked every day, and I slept by smelly haystacks with bugs sitting on my skin." The other whales were amazed. "But how did you transform?" "I was born to be here. There was no transformation. I only needed to find my place, and I did." That night many of the whales climbed out of the water and became themselves. The Great Whale became a constellation.